Total Pageviews

Tuesday, 6 November 2012

Planting Trees

Planting trees is probably the hardest thing
I ever did for a buck in my life. It is totally exhausting. In the early 1970s
I made an attempt at this type of work twice. Once at Franklin River which is
between Port Alberni and Tofino on the west coast of Vancouver Island and a
second time in Northern BC at a place called Ootsa Lake.

It seemed to me, at the time, that those best
suited for planting trees were the lean wiry types, people who could do a lot
of sit-ups if asked to. A strong back was also a good asset. If you were a bit
soft in the middle it could be a bit of a struggle.

I had a friend in Port Alberni who had done
some tree planting and I thought I would give it a try. I went out and bought
myself a pair of corks which are basically heavy work boots with nails sticking
out of the soles. The nails are for traction. I hated the damned things. First
of all they seemed to weigh about 10 lbs. each and secondly you could cut one
of your legs if you tripped which I did more than a few times.

The instrument one uses to plant trees varies
depending on what is available or what the foreman of a crew has chosen. One
instrument is the old pick axe with a flat blade and another is a thing called
a dibble which is a metal pole about as long as a ski pole (much heavier) with
a little ledge on it about 6 inches from the bottom that you jammed your foot
down on to make a hole.

Usually a crew would consist of about 8-10
people and a leader. The guy who would run the show was often the same guy who
had acquired a short term contract from a forestry company. Each day, shortly
after sunup we would drive out to where the day’s planting was to occur and we
would pack up about a hundred seedlings in a cloth bag that we slung over our
shoulders. We would then spread out about 10 feet across and march forward in a
row. We were expected to plant a tree about every 3 yards. Our daily quota was
1000 trees.

Often the area where we were planting was
where a forest fire had occurred or it had been burned purposefully to allow for
new growth. We worked in all kinds of weather including sleet and rain. By the
end of the day we would be pretty filthy. There were lots of mud and lots of
rocks. There isn’t much more futile and bone crunching than coming down with an
overhead swing of a pick axe onto a hard rock.

I lasted about 5 days at Franklin River
before telling the foreman to shove it when he was riding me late one
afternoon. I swore to myself that I would never plant trees again.

About a year or so later I was staying out in
Gordon Head, a suburb of Victoria, BC. A girlfriend of a friend of mine was
house sitting a professor from U. Vic’s place for the summer. And what a
gorgeous house it was. It was right on the ocean. Throughout the house there
were glass cases with artifacts the prof had picked up on his world travels.
Although I never met him, Paul Horn, the world renowned jazz flautist, lived
next door.

My 68 Ford Falcon at house in Gordon Head.

One night we were sitting around yacking and
a friend of a friend of mine told me he was going up north to plant trees at a place called Ootsa Lake and
would I be interested in joining him. I told him about my previous experience
and somehow through his convincing and my being short of cash I decided to give
it another try. I had just acquired my first car a few months earlier, parked
it down the laneway, and a few days later joined a crew in two “crummies”(a pick-up truck with a backseat) and we
caught a ferry to Vancouver and onward up to Northern BC.

We travelled along Highway #1 and cut north
at Cache Creek. I had only been driving for a few months and came up with the
bright idea of offering to drive the crummy for a while. I had never driven a
big truck before. It didn’t take long for me to feel like I was on some wild
amusement ride. The other truck in front of me was doing about 80 MPH and I was
trying to keep up. I think there were some eyeballs in the back seat staring at
one another. Finally it was suggested that someone else take the wheel. There
was no arguing on my part. Did I mention that we had all shared a joint?

Our crew foreman was a thickset guy named
Glenn. He had his bush pilot’s license and played rugby. Not a guy to trifle
with. Most of the rest of the crew were hippies who came up every year to make
enough cash to buy some pot and basic food staples that would sustain them for a
good part of the rest of the year. A few of the guys had ponytails. One guy was
a walking authority on the band The Who.

The month was late May and the warmer weather
hadn’t turned up yet. Our sleeping quarters were in trailers. One trailer was
where the kitchen and dining room was. The food looked great and there was
plenty of it. Maybe this time planting trees wouldn’t be so hard? What was a
month out of my life? All I had to do was survive and I would get a nice fat
pay cheque at the end.

Things kind of started off OK, at least for
the first week or so. And then I started to wear down a bit. This was really
hard work. Most days were overcast and we worked in the rain and light snow. I
was amazed that a few of the hippies would keep working for extra cash at a
nickel a tree after a full 8 hours and already having planted a 1000 trees that
day.

Loading up our bags of trees for the day.

The camp cook turned out to be a drunk and
the quality of the food began to deteriorate. Stuff that had been passed on the
day before was offered up again. It is an empty feeling when you can’t look
forward to eating. Each morning when we woke up some guy would play and Eagles
album. The music was like an ominous warning of the miserable day ahead. It
took me quite a while to appreciate the Eagles after that.

Back in Victoria I would have been chasing
women at The Olde Forge Cabaret and working on my tennis backhand out at U.
Vic. What had I gotten myself into?

Well at least the hockey playoffs were on and
there was a TV. By 8 o’clock each night everyone was asleep including the hard
working hippies. Before one hockey game I drove the crummy over to the lake and
cast off a fishing line with 2 hooks and bait attached. I came back and hour or
so later and I discovered that I had hooked 2 rainbow trout. I was quite
impressed with that.

We were working 7 days a week. A plan was
made that where we would go into Burns Lake some distance away and spend a
Saturday night there. There was quite a lot of drinking going on with the crew.
Around 4 p.m. I thought I would grab a nap back at the hotel we were staying at
and be ready for some real partying that night. As luck would have it, I slept
through the whole evening and missed out on everything. I learned the next day
that one of the hippies had picked up a stripper the night before.

3 of the crew.

We drove back to camp at Ootsa Lake. There
was only two weeks left of this misery and I thought I would survive to the
end. We were divided into two groups both led by hippies. These guys could be
pretty funny at times. I remember one of them saying something that some might
think inappropriate but it sure made us all laugh. One of the hippie leaders
stood on a hill ahead of us and yelled “Come on you niggers!” like we were
plantation workers. These guys didn’t have a racist bone in their bodies.

Ootsa Lake is pretty well out in the middle
of nowhere. I think the lake was a result of some dam being built and a river
being diverted. Eurocan Pulp and Paper had a mill there for a number of years.
Later a bible camp was built in the area.

Over the close to a month that I was up there
I saw lots of wildlife, often not too far away. There were bears and caribou
herds and I had my once only ever sighting of a lynx.

The guy in our crew that I knew from Victoria
was struggling to make it through each day as I was. He also had the handicap
of being rather stout in stature. We were kind of at the bottom of the totem
pole as far as fitness goes. He was in quite a lot of pain where I was just
totally bagged by it all.

The calendar pages were turning very slowly. I
counted the days until we would return to civilization. On the second to last
day the foreman came out to check on our work. I don’t think he ever caught on
that a few guys were burying a handful of saplings in soft earth by creeks when
they weren’t being watched.

The big no-no in planting trees was a thing
called “hockey stick roots”. If you planted the tree at an angle instead of
straight up and down the tree would grow at an angle. I think I mentioned that
the foreman was a pretty intimidating guy. The long and the short of it was the
shit hit the fan when he discovered some hockey stick roots. I was one of the culprits.
It certainly wasn’t intentional. The foreman started to ride me a bit verbally
and I kind of snapped. I was fired on the spot, perhaps partly as a warning to
the others.

I quickly found out that being fired meant
that I would have to find my own way back to Victoria. No ride in the crummy
for me or the Kelsey Bay ferry trip back to northern Vancouver Island. No high
fives. No group hugs. Just hit the road Jack! On top of that I wasn’t going to
be paid until I got back to Victoria.

I didn’t have any alternative other than to
pack my bag and head down the dirt road that led to the camp and try to get
some rides hitchhiking. I lucked out when a guy stopped to pick me up in a dark
coloured station wagon. He drove me all the way to Cache Creek which was quite
a distance.

I was a seasoned hitchhiker and the first
thing I always did when I got into a car was start a conversation. This would
usually give me a clue if I was travelling with a pervert or a serial killer.
One of things I asked was what the driver did for a living. He kind of let that
slide and we talked about other stuff. A few hours into my lift I asked him
again what he did for a living and this time he came clean. He worked for a
coroner and had just recently fished a body out of a river. The same body was
now behind a curtain just over my shoulder. Yuck!

It took me about a day and a half to make my
way back to Victoria. I met up with some of the crew at a tavern on Government
Street and one of the guys had my pay cheque. I peeked inside the envelope and
got that peaceful easy feeling if you know what I mean. We had a few laughs and
told a few stories and I went on my way. I think I got about 30 bucks when I
sold my corks.

In the past few years I have read stories
about people from third world countries living in tents in atrocious conditions
at tree planting camps in BC. Apparently the tree planting contracts are now
bid on and some of the winners cut as many corners as they can including
providing reasonable room and board. In retrospect I probably got off pretty
lightly.

It is now over 40 years since I planted my
last tree. Somewhere, far away in northern BC, there are some very mature trees
swaying in the breeze that I planted. Actually there are thousands of them and
just maybe a few that aren’t as straight as the others.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Followers

About Me

I grew up in Montreal and have spent most of my life living in the Vancouver, B.C. area where I was a businessman for many years. I am now retired and living on Vancouver Island with Linda Spenard and our golden retriever Shelby. R.I.P. Cooper. I have 2 kids, twins, Dean and Leah who are 29.
I can be reached at my e-mail address colinatcove@shaw.ca
Pictures of some of our travels can be found on Picasa.
http://picasaweb.google.com/colinincanada (hasn't been updated for some time).
A special thanks to my older brother David for letting me use his old photos.
Thanks also to Linda Spenard for her photos and support.